Empowering Professional Teaching in Engineering. John Heywood
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СКАЧАТЬ I could probably design the lesson plan (and perhaps the test) so that it better assisted the attainment of behavioral objectives. The theory seems to be correct-perhaps useful is a better word—but I would hope to conduct experiments in the future using controls to arrive at a stronger verification.”

      “The second reading (Howard) appeared to offer little to alter the fundamental theory on the use of examples and non-examples and rather offered refinements on its use, in addition to some other techniques (use of metaphors and concept maps) to embellish it. From this I infer that the idea of using examples and non-examples has held its own over the years, and it is in my own teaching practice that I will have to investigate the value of the theory further. This will certainly require a restructuring of my approach to lesson planning as the methods that I have been using hitherto have been based more on intuitive feel than hard facts and experimental evidence.”

      “The most exciting prospect is that the classroom can be approached as experimental laboratory in which to apply, test, and evaluate ideas on how to improve students learning. The challenge to me as a teacher is to become active in being experimental and open to changing my preconceived or un-thought through attitudes on how to do things.”

      (b) “After reading Howard I would not have been afraid to use metaphors in the lesson. I was unsure of beginning the class with connecting percentages to decimals and fractions, but like everything else in mathematics everything is interconnected and cannot be understood until the lower steps have been mastered. At the end of the class they realized that percentages, fractions and decimals represented a part of a value and could tell the difference between them. I am familiar with students taking the incorrect aspects of the metaphor in learning a concept and I am conscious only to use metaphors with great care only after discriminating between the analogy and the new concept. I like the idea of concept mapping as this would allow me to work out at what stage the students are at and it could help me start at their level instead of having to make assumptions all of the time. If they didn’t understand what I was presenting I would have a logical plan to refer back to. Likewise if they already knew what I was doing.”